Tonya V. Thomas has experience in instructional design, education technology, performance support, multimedia communications, and technology consulting. She has expert-level experience with Microsoft, Adobe, and other instructional design applications. Thomas is skilled at designing engaging instruction, leveraging emerging learning technologies, managing complex projects, optimizing productivity, and improving processes through innovative solutions and appropriate uses of technology.
Learn Better Work Better: How 21st Century Training Elevates PerformanceHuman Capital Media
Most enterprise training is stuck in a game of catch-up: They teach employees skills for today on digital tools that'll change tomorrow. Learners are fed up and companies cannot afford to continue traditional training that works only 15 percent of the time. The solution is to build an organizational culture around results-driven learning by training not for today but for the future.
In this webinar, you’ll learn how to:
Construct training that resonates with the 21st-century brain.
Shift to a microlearning method that delivers performance support in real time.
Bring your whole organization up to speed on the universal baseline of digital skills.
Enrich your employees through an organizational culture of learning.
Speaker:
Alex Khurgin - Director of Learning Grovo Learning Inc.
Alex Khurgin is the director of learning at Grovo Learning Inc., a cloud-based training platform that identifies digital skills gaps within an organization, and provides development plans to close those gaps with highly engaging, 60-second videos. Khurgin works closely with the product and content teams at Grovo to help implement Grovo's learner-first training method, which combines elements of holistic learning, competency-based learning, and microlearning to drive quick, meaningful and lasting performance improvements.
What are the common challenges of user adoption and why should you care about...Tracy Van der Schyff
Presentation for webinar with Jussi Mori on 13 December 2017
•What are the common challenges of User adoption and why should you care about them?
•What is the ROI of End-User training?
•How to increase the value of your digital investments with the proper End-User training?
Benjamin Joffe, Managing Director of Plus Eight Star, gave a speech in Beijing in 2008 about inspireware and creativity. The speech discussed how most copy-to-China business models don't work because they are not innovative or differentiated. Inspireware was presented as a way to inspire people through exposure to new ideas from speakers like Fredrik Haren, Tomi Ahonen, and Liu Lanlan, rather than just watching neighbors or waiting for inspiration. Over 200 inspiring speeches are available for free on the internet to get inspired. Creativity was also discussed in terms of simplicity and emotions.
DockerCon SF 2015: Education for a digital worldDocker, Inc.
Slides from Kwame “Darth” Yamgnane / Gaëtan “Big Air” Juvin's presentation at DockerCon SF 2015
Talk Description: In July 2013, Detroit, symbol of the US industrial era, dropped down to the most important bankruptcy in the US history, estimated at 20 Billion. The same year, Facebook market cap was 100 Billion. 42 is a school, which tries to give an answer to a wonderful challenge: How to move from an education created to give answers and labor to industries, to an education that will create people who are ready to be citizens of the digital world.
Li Wei is a technology commercialization specialist born in Fuzhou, China and currently living in Singapore. He has a PhD in microelectronics engineering, an MBA, and experience in engineering, research and development, business development, and commercialization. Li Wei has negotiated over $6 million in license contracts and led collaborative projects commercializing IoT and medical technologies. He is currently a senior manager helping commercialize technologies from A*STAR, Singapore's largest research organization.
MIT_ Team Dynamics and Communicational Impactrlanca
The document discusses factors that contribute to successful team building and communication. It notes that 55% of communication is through gestures and 38% is through voice. Some key factors for effective communication are preparation, conviction, goals, active listening, empathy, and prompt follow-through on actions. Successful teams have common goals, shared values, honest feedback, strong leadership, and adaptability. Teams can fail if they lack structure, coordination, leadership, conflict management abilities, or a clear strategy.
Look, Lead, Love, Learn: Four Steps to Better Business, a Better Life, and Co...Bill Sheridan, CAE
From the 2014 AICPA E.D.G.E. Conference: It's a new world in the workplace. Groundbreaking shifts in regulation, demographics, leadership and technology mean that "business as usual" doesn't cut it anymore. Success today depends on our ability to collaborate, connect, innovate and inspire.
Tonya V. Thomas has experience in instructional design, education technology, performance support, multimedia communications, and technology consulting. She has expert-level experience with Microsoft, Adobe, and other instructional design applications. Thomas is skilled at designing engaging instruction, leveraging emerging learning technologies, managing complex projects, optimizing productivity, and improving processes through innovative solutions and appropriate uses of technology.
Learn Better Work Better: How 21st Century Training Elevates PerformanceHuman Capital Media
Most enterprise training is stuck in a game of catch-up: They teach employees skills for today on digital tools that'll change tomorrow. Learners are fed up and companies cannot afford to continue traditional training that works only 15 percent of the time. The solution is to build an organizational culture around results-driven learning by training not for today but for the future.
In this webinar, you’ll learn how to:
Construct training that resonates with the 21st-century brain.
Shift to a microlearning method that delivers performance support in real time.
Bring your whole organization up to speed on the universal baseline of digital skills.
Enrich your employees through an organizational culture of learning.
Speaker:
Alex Khurgin - Director of Learning Grovo Learning Inc.
Alex Khurgin is the director of learning at Grovo Learning Inc., a cloud-based training platform that identifies digital skills gaps within an organization, and provides development plans to close those gaps with highly engaging, 60-second videos. Khurgin works closely with the product and content teams at Grovo to help implement Grovo's learner-first training method, which combines elements of holistic learning, competency-based learning, and microlearning to drive quick, meaningful and lasting performance improvements.
What are the common challenges of user adoption and why should you care about...Tracy Van der Schyff
Presentation for webinar with Jussi Mori on 13 December 2017
•What are the common challenges of User adoption and why should you care about them?
•What is the ROI of End-User training?
•How to increase the value of your digital investments with the proper End-User training?
Benjamin Joffe, Managing Director of Plus Eight Star, gave a speech in Beijing in 2008 about inspireware and creativity. The speech discussed how most copy-to-China business models don't work because they are not innovative or differentiated. Inspireware was presented as a way to inspire people through exposure to new ideas from speakers like Fredrik Haren, Tomi Ahonen, and Liu Lanlan, rather than just watching neighbors or waiting for inspiration. Over 200 inspiring speeches are available for free on the internet to get inspired. Creativity was also discussed in terms of simplicity and emotions.
DockerCon SF 2015: Education for a digital worldDocker, Inc.
Slides from Kwame “Darth” Yamgnane / Gaëtan “Big Air” Juvin's presentation at DockerCon SF 2015
Talk Description: In July 2013, Detroit, symbol of the US industrial era, dropped down to the most important bankruptcy in the US history, estimated at 20 Billion. The same year, Facebook market cap was 100 Billion. 42 is a school, which tries to give an answer to a wonderful challenge: How to move from an education created to give answers and labor to industries, to an education that will create people who are ready to be citizens of the digital world.
Li Wei is a technology commercialization specialist born in Fuzhou, China and currently living in Singapore. He has a PhD in microelectronics engineering, an MBA, and experience in engineering, research and development, business development, and commercialization. Li Wei has negotiated over $6 million in license contracts and led collaborative projects commercializing IoT and medical technologies. He is currently a senior manager helping commercialize technologies from A*STAR, Singapore's largest research organization.
MIT_ Team Dynamics and Communicational Impactrlanca
The document discusses factors that contribute to successful team building and communication. It notes that 55% of communication is through gestures and 38% is through voice. Some key factors for effective communication are preparation, conviction, goals, active listening, empathy, and prompt follow-through on actions. Successful teams have common goals, shared values, honest feedback, strong leadership, and adaptability. Teams can fail if they lack structure, coordination, leadership, conflict management abilities, or a clear strategy.
Look, Lead, Love, Learn: Four Steps to Better Business, a Better Life, and Co...Bill Sheridan, CAE
From the 2014 AICPA E.D.G.E. Conference: It's a new world in the workplace. Groundbreaking shifts in regulation, demographics, leadership and technology mean that "business as usual" doesn't cut it anymore. Success today depends on our ability to collaborate, connect, innovate and inspire.
This lightning talk discusses collaboration and its importance in today's work environment. Effective collaboration is often necessary for success in complex organizational activities. There are challenges like dispersed teams, constant technology evolution, and reduced knowledge lifespan. The talk outlines barriers to collaboration like information hoarding and lack of findability. It provides steps to discipline collaboration through evaluating opportunities, spotting barriers, and tailoring solutions. Key aspects of solutions include unifying people and having nimble networks.
Marketing Innovation: Keys to Open Innovation SuccessIHS Goldfire
To build a groundswell of awareness, support and demand for your innovation initiatives - you need to establish a strong internal communications program.
Becoming more innovative & creative June 2012Timothy Holden
Toronto Training and HR provides training and consulting services to help organizations become more innovative and creative. The document discusses key topics like boosting creativity in the workplace, critical innovation skills, barriers to public sector innovation, and levels of ambition. Case studies are also presented to illustrate innovation concepts. The conclusion invites the reader to review additional videos and materials and consider questions to reflect on applying innovation strategies.
Outcome Engineering 101: Five Guidelines to Delivering Products that Create I...Cognizant
Outcome engineering is a creative process that marries technological perspective with design thinking to ensure products deliver desired business outcomes. The document provides 5 guidelines for outcome-oriented product development: 1) Reframe how designers and engineers work together from the start, 2) Make innovation practical through user empathy, 3) Iteratively improve products through small changes, 4) Validate ideas quickly with prototyping, and 5) Motivate teams through gamification by tying rewards to impact. The goal is to anticipate customer needs, bring out the best in design and technology, and continually refine products through testing to gain a competitive edge.
The document discusses collaboration in the creative industry. It provides background on glue, a London-based creative agency, and describes their work promoting collaboration across different teams and with clients. It also discusses how the digital space requires collaboration to complete complex projects, bring together diverse skills, and keep up with rapid changes. Finally, it offers tips for being a good creative leader in a collaborative environment such as being transparent, open to new ideas, and fighting to provide preparation time for teams.
Best ways remote developers can stay updated.pdfTuring.com
It’s impossible to learn everything in this fast-moving tech industry as a developer. But the software development domain demands staying updated with new trends and technologies to stay relevant in the job market. Now, there is no absolute way for any developer to acquire all the technologies in one go.
However, developers can extend their knowledge gradually by learning new technologies. But what are ways of doing it? This presentation entails all the information developers should know to keep themselves updated with the latest technologies.
So read on!
About Turing
Turing is a data-science-driven deep jobs platform helping companies spin up their engineering teams in the cloud at the push of a button. Based in Palo Alto, California, it is a fully remote company of 800+ people who help connect world-class remote software engineers with world-class companies.
Turing makes the remote hiring journey easy and rewarding for both companies and developers. With Turing, companies can hire pre-vetted, Silicon Valley-caliber remote software talent across 100+ skills in 3-5 days. Also, Turing democratizes opportunities for remote developers from around the world by offering them high-quality software jobs with top US firms.
Turing's Intelligent Talent Cloud uses AI to source, vet, match, and manage over 1.5 million developers worldwide. This, in turn, helps organizations save valuable time and resources as they build their dream engineering team in a matter of days.
For more info, head over to: http://turing.com/s/yB8zZu
Learning in 3D: rules from the revolutionariesRon Dvir
The document summarizes insights from 4 pioneers in 3D learning on implementing 3D learning effectively. It discusses overcoming objections, establishing early adoption, securing sponsorship, demonstrating value, crossing adoption gaps, and achieving mainstream use. Key advice includes focusing projects, managing expectations, integrating technologies simply, and avoiding solutions requiring high performance machines.
Design Thinking Methodology is a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand their users better, challenge assumptions, redefine challenges, and develop and test novel solutions.
For more details, visit : https://mitidinnovation.com/recreation/introduction-to-design-thinking-methodology/
This document discusses focal points for working in the Internet of Things ecosystem. It touches on improving consumer experiences through prototyping, building tools and practices for others, helping users become literate, and streamlining standardization efforts. The IoT ecosystem involves startups, incubators, corporations, governments, standards groups, and non-profits with sometimes competing interests and objectives. The author advocates for prototyping well, building transparent business processes, partnering broadly, helping users become literate, and actively engaging with the community.
Product Quality Management (PQM) BRAINSTORMING, DELPHI Method AND NOMINAL GRO...Sanchit
This document discusses and compares different group decision making techniques: brainstorming, the Delphi technique, and the nominal group technique. It provides details on how each technique is conducted and its advantages and disadvantages. It also gives examples of companies that have used these techniques successfully, such as a marketing company in Japan that used brainstorming to boost sales of eco-friendly products.
The document summarizes a roundtable discussion on the future of the social web hosted by Forrester Research. 38 representatives from brands and social media companies generated 4 predictions for the future of the social web. They then identified challenges for each prediction and brainstormed solutions in breakout sessions. The predictions focused on communities participating in all aspects of business, brands engaging with organic communities, work styles evolving through broader collaboration, and single user identities with multiple facets. Challenges and potential solutions were discussed for bringing each prediction to fruition.
The document discusses embracing failure as an important part of innovation culture. It argues that companies must accept experimentation and the failures that come with trying new things. Failure is defined as occurring when trying something new without knowing ahead of time how to make it successful, rather than from a lack of effort or competence. The document provides perspectives on developing a culture that is constructive about failure, including by using terms like "smartfailing" and viewing failure as a learning opportunity. It also outlines six stages of failure and redemption to help companies move forward productively from failures.
Digital disruption refers to using digital technologies to disrupt existing businesses and industries. It requires companies to rethink their entire business model, not just technology, and adopt the mindset of a digital disruptor. This involves thinking differently and focusing on giving customers what they really want. Companies must exploit digital platforms, have an ongoing relationship with customers, and view failure as feedback. To behave as a digital disruptor, companies should pursue adjacent opportunities to provide new customer benefits, give customers a total product experience, and let customer needs guide their innovation. They must also disrupt themselves by establishing digital disruption as a priority, identifying barriers between departments, and designing teams to find disruptive opportunities.
Informal Learning: Broadening the Spectrum of Corporate LearningHans de Zwart
A keynote presentation for the 2010 Symposium of the Dommel Valley Group. Delivered on November 7th, 2010. It describes the DNA of the L&D of my employer, describes some very recent experimentation in the learning space and takes a sneak peek into the future of the learning function.
This document provides an overview of entrepreneurship and how to get started. It discusses defining entrepreneurship as solving problems others don't see solutions for yet. It outlines skills needed like vision, execution, and flexibility. It discusses picking ideas by finding problems without solutions and leveraging one's own skills. The document provides tips for building a team, product, and startup operation. It encourages learning applicable skills and getting experience through internships, jobs, or starting one's own startup to get involved in entrepreneurship.
Social Learning And The Recession Five Survival TipsMzinga
The document summarizes a webinar on using social learning strategies to survive economic recessions. It outlines 5 challenges learning organizations may face during recessions and suggests addressing them by expanding social learning approaches. These involve including external partners and customers, focusing on facilitation over content creation, collaborating across departments, developing personal learning networks, and prioritizing collaboration over measurement. Resources for further information on social learning are also provided.
This document provides a summary of a presentation on marketing-led innovation. It discusses how marketing innovations emerge and grow in chaotic market conditions. It introduces concepts like the "garbage can" model of organizational problem solving and explains how understanding this model can help innovations succeed. The presentation also provides examples of innovation "playbooks" or frameworks that can be applied, such as the Business Model Canvas, and discusses principles for developing playbooks for technology startups.
Optimize Customer Experiences with Design ThinkingJared Hill
If you are looking to generate engaging digital experiences but are unsure where to begin, leveraging the knowledge within your organization is a good starting point. However, information is typically dispersed across the company in silos. Different business units often have their own vernacular. Design thinking provides a common language. It’s a customer-centric approach to problem solving that is both creative and practical.
Industry leaders have been using design thinking methodology to work with cross-functional and multidisciplinary teams to create innovative customer journeys. Learn how in our recorded webinar, Optimize Customer Experiences with Design Thinking.
You will learn:
• Why leverage design thinking
• How to successfully lead a remote workshop
• How to document winning customer journeys
• How to map desired experiences in Signavio for builders
This lightning talk discusses collaboration and its importance in today's work environment. Effective collaboration is often necessary for success in complex organizational activities. There are challenges like dispersed teams, constant technology evolution, and reduced knowledge lifespan. The talk outlines barriers to collaboration like information hoarding and lack of findability. It provides steps to discipline collaboration through evaluating opportunities, spotting barriers, and tailoring solutions. Key aspects of solutions include unifying people and having nimble networks.
Marketing Innovation: Keys to Open Innovation SuccessIHS Goldfire
To build a groundswell of awareness, support and demand for your innovation initiatives - you need to establish a strong internal communications program.
Becoming more innovative & creative June 2012Timothy Holden
Toronto Training and HR provides training and consulting services to help organizations become more innovative and creative. The document discusses key topics like boosting creativity in the workplace, critical innovation skills, barriers to public sector innovation, and levels of ambition. Case studies are also presented to illustrate innovation concepts. The conclusion invites the reader to review additional videos and materials and consider questions to reflect on applying innovation strategies.
Outcome Engineering 101: Five Guidelines to Delivering Products that Create I...Cognizant
Outcome engineering is a creative process that marries technological perspective with design thinking to ensure products deliver desired business outcomes. The document provides 5 guidelines for outcome-oriented product development: 1) Reframe how designers and engineers work together from the start, 2) Make innovation practical through user empathy, 3) Iteratively improve products through small changes, 4) Validate ideas quickly with prototyping, and 5) Motivate teams through gamification by tying rewards to impact. The goal is to anticipate customer needs, bring out the best in design and technology, and continually refine products through testing to gain a competitive edge.
The document discusses collaboration in the creative industry. It provides background on glue, a London-based creative agency, and describes their work promoting collaboration across different teams and with clients. It also discusses how the digital space requires collaboration to complete complex projects, bring together diverse skills, and keep up with rapid changes. Finally, it offers tips for being a good creative leader in a collaborative environment such as being transparent, open to new ideas, and fighting to provide preparation time for teams.
Best ways remote developers can stay updated.pdfTuring.com
It’s impossible to learn everything in this fast-moving tech industry as a developer. But the software development domain demands staying updated with new trends and technologies to stay relevant in the job market. Now, there is no absolute way for any developer to acquire all the technologies in one go.
However, developers can extend their knowledge gradually by learning new technologies. But what are ways of doing it? This presentation entails all the information developers should know to keep themselves updated with the latest technologies.
So read on!
About Turing
Turing is a data-science-driven deep jobs platform helping companies spin up their engineering teams in the cloud at the push of a button. Based in Palo Alto, California, it is a fully remote company of 800+ people who help connect world-class remote software engineers with world-class companies.
Turing makes the remote hiring journey easy and rewarding for both companies and developers. With Turing, companies can hire pre-vetted, Silicon Valley-caliber remote software talent across 100+ skills in 3-5 days. Also, Turing democratizes opportunities for remote developers from around the world by offering them high-quality software jobs with top US firms.
Turing's Intelligent Talent Cloud uses AI to source, vet, match, and manage over 1.5 million developers worldwide. This, in turn, helps organizations save valuable time and resources as they build their dream engineering team in a matter of days.
For more info, head over to: http://turing.com/s/yB8zZu
Learning in 3D: rules from the revolutionariesRon Dvir
The document summarizes insights from 4 pioneers in 3D learning on implementing 3D learning effectively. It discusses overcoming objections, establishing early adoption, securing sponsorship, demonstrating value, crossing adoption gaps, and achieving mainstream use. Key advice includes focusing projects, managing expectations, integrating technologies simply, and avoiding solutions requiring high performance machines.
Design Thinking Methodology is a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand their users better, challenge assumptions, redefine challenges, and develop and test novel solutions.
For more details, visit : https://mitidinnovation.com/recreation/introduction-to-design-thinking-methodology/
This document discusses focal points for working in the Internet of Things ecosystem. It touches on improving consumer experiences through prototyping, building tools and practices for others, helping users become literate, and streamlining standardization efforts. The IoT ecosystem involves startups, incubators, corporations, governments, standards groups, and non-profits with sometimes competing interests and objectives. The author advocates for prototyping well, building transparent business processes, partnering broadly, helping users become literate, and actively engaging with the community.
Product Quality Management (PQM) BRAINSTORMING, DELPHI Method AND NOMINAL GRO...Sanchit
This document discusses and compares different group decision making techniques: brainstorming, the Delphi technique, and the nominal group technique. It provides details on how each technique is conducted and its advantages and disadvantages. It also gives examples of companies that have used these techniques successfully, such as a marketing company in Japan that used brainstorming to boost sales of eco-friendly products.
The document summarizes a roundtable discussion on the future of the social web hosted by Forrester Research. 38 representatives from brands and social media companies generated 4 predictions for the future of the social web. They then identified challenges for each prediction and brainstormed solutions in breakout sessions. The predictions focused on communities participating in all aspects of business, brands engaging with organic communities, work styles evolving through broader collaboration, and single user identities with multiple facets. Challenges and potential solutions were discussed for bringing each prediction to fruition.
The document discusses embracing failure as an important part of innovation culture. It argues that companies must accept experimentation and the failures that come with trying new things. Failure is defined as occurring when trying something new without knowing ahead of time how to make it successful, rather than from a lack of effort or competence. The document provides perspectives on developing a culture that is constructive about failure, including by using terms like "smartfailing" and viewing failure as a learning opportunity. It also outlines six stages of failure and redemption to help companies move forward productively from failures.
Digital disruption refers to using digital technologies to disrupt existing businesses and industries. It requires companies to rethink their entire business model, not just technology, and adopt the mindset of a digital disruptor. This involves thinking differently and focusing on giving customers what they really want. Companies must exploit digital platforms, have an ongoing relationship with customers, and view failure as feedback. To behave as a digital disruptor, companies should pursue adjacent opportunities to provide new customer benefits, give customers a total product experience, and let customer needs guide their innovation. They must also disrupt themselves by establishing digital disruption as a priority, identifying barriers between departments, and designing teams to find disruptive opportunities.
Informal Learning: Broadening the Spectrum of Corporate LearningHans de Zwart
A keynote presentation for the 2010 Symposium of the Dommel Valley Group. Delivered on November 7th, 2010. It describes the DNA of the L&D of my employer, describes some very recent experimentation in the learning space and takes a sneak peek into the future of the learning function.
This document provides an overview of entrepreneurship and how to get started. It discusses defining entrepreneurship as solving problems others don't see solutions for yet. It outlines skills needed like vision, execution, and flexibility. It discusses picking ideas by finding problems without solutions and leveraging one's own skills. The document provides tips for building a team, product, and startup operation. It encourages learning applicable skills and getting experience through internships, jobs, or starting one's own startup to get involved in entrepreneurship.
Social Learning And The Recession Five Survival TipsMzinga
The document summarizes a webinar on using social learning strategies to survive economic recessions. It outlines 5 challenges learning organizations may face during recessions and suggests addressing them by expanding social learning approaches. These involve including external partners and customers, focusing on facilitation over content creation, collaborating across departments, developing personal learning networks, and prioritizing collaboration over measurement. Resources for further information on social learning are also provided.
This document provides a summary of a presentation on marketing-led innovation. It discusses how marketing innovations emerge and grow in chaotic market conditions. It introduces concepts like the "garbage can" model of organizational problem solving and explains how understanding this model can help innovations succeed. The presentation also provides examples of innovation "playbooks" or frameworks that can be applied, such as the Business Model Canvas, and discusses principles for developing playbooks for technology startups.
Optimize Customer Experiences with Design ThinkingJared Hill
If you are looking to generate engaging digital experiences but are unsure where to begin, leveraging the knowledge within your organization is a good starting point. However, information is typically dispersed across the company in silos. Different business units often have their own vernacular. Design thinking provides a common language. It’s a customer-centric approach to problem solving that is both creative and practical.
Industry leaders have been using design thinking methodology to work with cross-functional and multidisciplinary teams to create innovative customer journeys. Learn how in our recorded webinar, Optimize Customer Experiences with Design Thinking.
You will learn:
• Why leverage design thinking
• How to successfully lead a remote workshop
• How to document winning customer journeys
• How to map desired experiences in Signavio for builders
8. Undeniablefacts of the 21st C Novel challenges Emergent problems Demanding clients Constant evolution of technology Dispersed teams Potential meaning overload Reduced half life of knowledge
Collaboration has become a buzz word in the workplace today. Everyone seems to be talking about collaboration and SoMe almost in the same breath.
Therefore, before I plunge into the presentation, let me tell you what this is not going to be about. This is not about Tools, E2.0., SoMe, platforms, or technology.
I am going to speak about disciplined collaboration. Collaboration is a complex social phenomenon and has many facets. In this short time span of 10 minutes, it would be impossible and ineffective to cover all aspects of collaboration.. What I would like to do is touch upon these facets and hope to leave you with some food for thought.
What I would like to do instead is leave you with a few key pointers about the steps to disciplined collaboration, the upsides of collaboration, the barriers to collaboration and the key to tailoring solutions.
I draw my inspiration from Morten Hansen’s book Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results.
Apple iPod was not really a technological marvel. It was a smart combination of existing components. The hard-disk was a tiny 1.8 inch drive from ToshibaThe minute battery was from SonyThe hardware blueprint was provided by Portal PlayerSome of the software came from PixoWhat apple did exceptionally well was collaborate across these disparate units and create a product that blew the collective mind of the world in 2002 when Steve Jobs drew the ultra-portable player out of his pocket. Sony Connect The personal computer group based in TokyoThe portable audio teamTeam for flash memory playersSony music in US and JapanSony, on the other hand, had all the pieces they needed in-house. They had their music division, the software division…but when they tried to put the pieces together, they couldn’t. There was no culture of collaboration in the company. The culture of collaboration being the key phrase. In fact, it was the opposite. It was a culture of internal competition. In the past, this culture had helped Sony come up with hit products like the Walkman and the PlayStation video game player. This culture works really well if each unit can work in isolation. However, when they need to work together, the result is a disaster.Connect was not a standalone product. It required collaboration among five Sony divisions—the personal computer group based in Tokyo, the portable audio team responsible for the Walkman, another team resp for the flash memory players, Sony Music in the US and in Japan. However, there were way too many silos and each group went ahead with their own preferences. The product received an extremely negative review from the Wall Street Journal and was finally killed in 2007. But not before it had wreaked some havoc. Sony’s stock prices had declined by 20% by the end of 2006. In contrast, Apple’s share prices exploded from 11$ at the beginning of 2002 to 84$ at the end of 2006.
Sony’s failure shows how incomplexorganizational activities, effectivecollaborationis often a necessary requirement for success. And as we walk into the future, we are going to move into greater levels of complexity and ambiguity.
Because as we enter the second decade of the 21st Century, we know that information overload and change will be a constant, and the need to problem solve on the run will be the key to survival. This is where the need to understand the dynamics of Disciplined Collaboration comes in.
The idea of disciplined collaboration can be summed up in one phrase: the leadership practice of assessing when to collaborate (and when not to) and instilling in people both the willingness and the ability to collaborate when required. Evaluate opportunities for collaboration: The goal of collaboration is not collaboration but better results. The first task is to understand the case for collaboration--to appreciate how collaboration can increase performanceThe second is to evaluate the upside for the companyThe final task is to understand when to say “no” to collaboration—yes, there may be occasions when the cost of collaboration will outweigh the benefits and this needs to be evaluated.
Better innovation: we have seen Apple…there is also P&Gs Whitecrest, a product that evolved out of collaborative efforts. Better sales—opportunities to cross sellBetter operations—where collaboration leads to the transfer of best practices and helps in decision making.
The not invented here barrier—people are not willing to reach out to othersInsular cultureStatus gapSelf reliance (where the culture promotes “solve your own problem” mentality, asking for help may be conceived as ignorance or weakness)FearThe hoarding barrier—people are unwilling to provide helpBeing too busyFear of losing power where knowledge is deemed as powerFew incentives for collaboratingThe search barrier—people are not able to find what they are looking forCompany sizePhysical distancePoverty of networksOverload of information that is not relevantPlenty of strong ties but very few weak tiesThe transfer barrier—people are not able to work with people they don’t know wellTacit knowledgeNo common framesWeak ties
Craft a unifying goal that will bring people together, that is powerful yet simple, clear and measurable.Cultivate T-shaped management—where people are encouraged to work within team and across teams, via project rotations, location rotation, and so on.Kennedy’s man on the moon is the best known goals in the annals of leadership